I Hacked the Magic Mouse
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I always thought that the Magic Mouse was really the ideal technology for interacting with a Mac--just too bad that it's so unergonomic. I can't prove it, but I blame a decade of Magic Mouse use for my very painful RSI, which I now have the pleasure of experiencing using any mouse at all.
Apple's input devices are beautiful, but they totally blow comfort. It's as if their industrial designers are all in their early 20s and have never experienced joint pain.
The solution for me was to switch to a vertical mouse (well, almost) that allows the wrist to remain neutral. Because I missed the gestures I added a Magic Trackpad on the left side of my keyboard. Of course this suffers from the same ergonomic problem but I only reach for it sporadically so the impact is minimal.
From personal experience: if you have mild pain from past injury/strain, don't give up on trying to fix it. Move a lot, improve your muscle strength and try to stimulate circulation. Be careful not to repeat the injury, but don't avoid the pain altogether (eg. by reducing the amount of movement). It's possible that the pain will improve or disappear, even if your injury didn't heal by itself for years.
(Oh, and go see a physiotherapist a couple of times if you haven't already.)
This is why a lot of what PT’s do is teach you simple exercises to work ALL of your muscles, including those that might not get activated in our day to day existence, leading to problems.
I use my fingers on keyboards all day long. Body adapts and grows stronger with use, it doesn’t get more and more vulnerable. After I realized this it went away. Now I can use them 15h/day with 4.5h/day sleep with no problems.
It got bad enough I opted for cortisone injections.
This was about 10 years ago. I’ve avoided Apple’s input devices since, opting for proper ergonomic keyboards and mice, with no further RSI thankfully.
Riddle me this: My wife loves the hockeypuck mouse. The only thing that remains of her Tangerine iMac is its orange hockeypuck; I bought her a USBA-to-USBC dongle so she can use it with her MacBook Air.
Fortunately, she uses her computer infrequently enough to be relatively unaffected by RSI issues, so that may have something to do with it.
While society associates CTS with computer use, it’s actually the dentists and dental hygienists who suffer the most from it. Additionally, CTS predominantly affects women. It’s suspected this is due to their having slightly smaller wrists than men, on average, and CTS is simply compression of the median nerve at the carpal tunnel, which has the median nerve, plus many tendons, going through it.
I would be curious to know if any of the provocative tests for CTS increase your symptoms (eg bending your wrist at 90 degrees for 1 minute). It may be that your nerve impingement is occurring further up (like the shoulder area), and holding your mouse hand less interiorly-rotated is relieving the impingement in the shoulder girdle.
2. For the longest time I stopped using a mouse to alleviate RSI. Started using a Wacom tablet as a touchpad with my non-mouse hand.
3. A vertical mouse design allowed me to start using a mouse again and so far I’m ok. In my case it’s the Logitech vertical lift.
“RSI” is not a diagnosis, but rather an umbrella term for “anything repetitive that causes you injury or pain”. The “treatment” for RSI depends on which RSI you have. Even if you Google what all those RSIs are, you probably won’t get a comprehensive list. It’s an underserved area of orthopedic medicine. Anyway, figure out which RSI you have- skin cancer and stomach cancer are treated very differently, and similarly, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis are treated very differently.
Most people with an “RSI” have pain in their hands, but that pain could be caused by an impinged nerve (impingement can occur anywhere between the spine and the carpal tunnel in the wrist), overworked muscles, damaged tendons (very hard to do if you’re under the age of ~50), or arthritis (again, unlikely if you’re under ~50).
Arthritis is very easy to diagnose- you just need to look at an X-Ray of your hand. Conversely, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome is very DIFFICULT to diagnose, partially because many orthopedic surgeons aren’t familiar with it, and partially because nerve impingement is so deep inside you (the shoulder/upper chest area).
My experience with 3 orthopedic surgeons in my city has been consistent- they don’t have the time or attention span to really listen to your symptoms and want to diagnose you ASAP so they can move on to the next patient. Whether this is an issue of our healthcare system or the doctors themselves, I can’t say, but I can say that each one got the diagnosis wrong. They all heard “tingling in the hands” and jumped on carpal tunnel syndrome, even though there was evidence to suggest it wasn’t.
A lot of people swear by the ergonomic/split keyboards, and I’m not sure many realize that those keyboards are mostly adjusting your SHOULDERS- nothing to do with your wrists or hands. They also reduce the pronation your arms are in, which can be beneficial to fatigued muscles, and in rare cases alleviate nerve impingement that occurs around the pronator teres muscle in the arm, but usually impingement there is a result of something like bodybuilding rather than typing on a keyboard for a living. Anyway, if these keyboards do alleviate symptoms, great- but consider that your muscles may be tight in your shoulders, and your posture is probably not what it should be. The keyboard is probably a temporary fix if you don’t stretch, exercise and practice good posture in the “shoulder girdle”.
I tried one of those Magic Mouse “enhancements” (2009-2010) -- a white silicon contraption -- that sits atop the mouse. It was handy, and I used it for a while. I eventually got used to the mouse in its form and stopped trying any modifications.
I have tried the Master Series from Logitech, and I like them but don’t use all the functions. I like the simplicity of the Magic Mouse.
Charging - I do it once in 45 days, or when it complains — leave it charged -- have tea, walk/run, or read. Charging was never a problem, and I believe everyone else making a lot of noise about the charging is just overblowing it. If you remember to leave it charged overnight, it needs no charging for the next month or so.
1. https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-apple-mighty-mous...
I do miss the distinctive "click" Apple mice of this era made a lot though.
Having a first party Apple mouse with real middle click support is awesome. The multi direction scrolling has become a mandatory mouse feature for me. The size and weight are fantastic. For those that have used it, and don’t know, the nearly haptic tic while scrolling is an internal speaker which provides great feedback (especially when the rollers get stuck and the clicking stops so you known it’s time to clean the ball).
I find the Magic Mouse uncomfortable, it has no native middle click, no side buttons. Its best feature is that it fixed the scroll ball.
I finally broke down and bought a new, old stock Mighty Mouse a few months ago. The scroll ball feels so smooth.
Classic Apple mouse design. They never change, do they?
I don't endorse that particular listing, it was just the first one in my search results. It has a QI wireless power receiver, and a right-angled lightning connector. The intended usage is to plug it into an iPhone and put a case on top - but I think it'd work just fine on the bottom of a magic mouse. You could put the power transmitter under the mouse mat and never worry about charging ever again!
I haven't tried this so maybe there are practical reasons why it's a bad idea. Has anyone tried it?
I can't decide which is more appropriate, "Think different" or "you're holding it wrong"
>Gizmodo put their video on the web people were touching x marks the spot here and they were seeing a large drop in bars
> doesn't seem like a good idea if you can touch your phone one particularly grip your phone in a certain way and the bars go way down
and the fix was adding hysteresis to Cellular signal meter so it wont immediately react, no bars going down on screen = fixed.
i’m not saying i agree with apple’s decision, but i find the perspective interesting.
The wireless mice I've had with optionally connected cords for data/charging do tend to have a big glob of plastic at the end that locks into the mouse housing so none of the strain is on the actual USB connection.
Things like these:
https://www.amazon.com/Gaming-Mouse-Cable-Meters-Copper/dp/B...
They just want to control exactly how you use their products
Seriously though. This is absolutely correct. I get that some people don't like it, but I really don't get the obsession with the charging port.
I guess I should be glad that these people didn't complain the Apple Watch can't be worn while it's charging.
The obvious response is that the mouse should be thicker to accommodate those batteries, but that goes against Apple's entire ethos.
I always shake my fist in the air and curse "Eric Seifert's Mouse" semi-silently in frustration!
The constant need to have lithium ion is really terrible. Battery life is less of an issue when I can swap batteries quickly with common sizes.
I found having to always keep a supply of batteries at hand was more inconvenient than just plugging in the mouse once in a while.
But swapping tooling and retraining staff on assembly is extremely disruptive for a manufacturer. That disruption is passed back to the 1st party brand in incremental FOB and per-unit surcharge.
The incremental cost eats at your margin, which eats at your profit, which eats at your street price.
So, if you’re forced to choose between margin erosion and incremental cost for a product that has little effect on sales growth, you save the money and recycle the design.
People will bitch about the port on that mouse while they walk to the Apple Store to buy a new Mac that comes bundled with said mouse.
Apple will save millions annually by not optimizing a product that doesn’t really make them any money on its own.
When it’s reasonably cost effective to make a better peripheral, they will. Until then, they’re going to pay more attention to their books than people’s complaints, because mice don’t drive their business.
That anyone uses this mouse for an extended period is insane. It’s heavy a fuck, not ergonomic in the slightest, has insane uncomfortable edging, and cannot be used plugged in.
This mouse has no redeeming qualities at all.
Also that's Apple we are talking about, they are huge and can use manufacturing processes no one else can afford to use. And if it can improve their design even a tiny bit, they do. For example, when designing injection molded plastic parts, most designers feature what is called a draft angle, which mean the walls are not straight and parallel but at an angle, this is to help the part come out of the mold easily. Not Apple. Apple want its walls straight because they think it looks better, and they do what it takes to do it, even if it is much harder and expensive.
So, no, I don't believe Apple will compromise its design for technical details like swapping tooling and retraining staff, especially considering that the product has been out in its current form for more than a decade. They have more than enough resources to do exactly the mouse they want.
I also don't believe the "it comes for free with an iMac so no one cares" argument. Again, Apple attention to details is legendary and people pay good money for that, and it is not like they are bundling a cheap plastic mouse like most manufacturers, it is one of the most premium looking mouse on the market, with unique features.
All that to say that it has to be a deliberate choice, not a quirk of the manufacturing process.
It's the Tim Cook playbook. FFS they regularly sell years old computers.
The idea that Apple did this because they didn't know what they were doing is weird. Of course they knew what they were doing. You can charge it in a minute or two.
Apple chose not to allow people to keep a cable connected not just for the aesthetics but also to keep them from reusing existing cables (instead of an hypothetical lightning mouse cord) and getting a poor UX.
Magic Mouse was designed to be held with two fingers and moved with the wrist.
Personally I would never buy a product completely, diametrically different from what I need and then adapt it. But I guess some people like the challenge and I have no problem with that.
The whole product is full of bad decisions
As far as ergonomics goes, I've never had any more problems with a Magic Mouse than with any other mouse including ergonomic mice.
People make fun of "you're holding it wrong", but really RSI does come down to holding and manipulating things in ways that aren't good for you. What ergonomic design does is try to make it so you that you will discover and use a good way of holding the thing on your own and/or try to make it so that it is hard to hold it in a bad way.
That doesn't mean that things that do not have an ergonomic design cannot be used ergonomically. It just means you might have to consciously work at holding and manipulating them safely at least until that becomes habitual.
For the Magic Mouse the way I hold it has my fingers and palm and wrist in the same position they would be in if I were just resting my arm on the table. The mouse is the right size and shape to fit well in the dome make by the curve of my resting fingers and resting palm.
I don't really have a grip on it. It is more caged than held. Movement is mostly moving my whole arm. My wrist has barely any movement at all. Even when scrolling the wrist barely moves. Instead my arm backs up and raises so my middle finger can bend down and scroll.
For that vast majority the only consequence of the Magic Mouse port being on the bottom is that if they forget to charge their mouse for weeks and it dies in the middle of the day with the Magic Mouse they have to stop using the mouse for two minutes to get through the rest of the day whereas with the other mouse they would not lose those two minutes of mouse time.
"Oh but you have to charge it upside down", yes. Every something like 3 months I have to stop for some 15min (if I don't remember to charge it first) to be able to use it for the rest of the day and then charge it when I'm not using
It is really one complaint that's more internet meme than an actual grievance
A MagSafe connection to the front of the mouse seems like it would be much better.
I have an old AA version of the Magic Mouse, I'd much rather use that over the current Magic Mouse, though I currently use a Logitech. If they ever move the charging port off the bottom, I might give the Apple mouse another look.
Yes, but even that would change the aesthetic of the mouse when right-side up. Though yes, I like your suggestion
> It's on par with the Apple Pencil that charged in the bottom of the iPad.
That's probably worse though. And yes I agree it is bad
Basically yes, while charging upside down is ugly I think they kinda accept it because it's not "while in use" (also there might have been some space or other design constraints, etc)
In any case, given the thinness of Lightning, I still don't see how it would be impossibly ugly to have had such a connector at the top end of the mouse, turning it into a wired one during charge. The current Magic Mouse design is a compromised "plywood on the back of a chest of drawers" design.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445621-when-you-re-a-carpen...
everyone knows it's bad design
...which is subjective, personally I think Apple products look absolutely atrocious, with half of screen real estate of their software attributed to padding, and all their product's surfaces the blandest possible solid colors imaginable. So when a product not only functions worse, is several times the price, but also looks bad, what's left?
Padding is incredibly important for readable text content. For example, WCAG recommends that blocks of text be no more than 80 Latin glyphs wide.
https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-cont...
This is also subjective. Personally, I find Apple products to work far better than the competition. I have to use Windows every day at work and I find the experience miserable, and I’ve had 3 different Android phones and always find myself returning to the iPhone.
As for the price, Apple products do cost a bit more, but quadruple is quite the exaggeration. Comparable ultrabooks to the MacBook Pro (Dell XPS line, ThinkPad X1) aren’t massively far off, and they’re made of plastic, not aluminum, which makes a difference in durability in my experience. As for mobile, the iPhone is priced in line with other high-end smartphones like the Galaxy and Pixel lines.
You made a very good point.
This whole post reminds me the whole iPhone Jailbreak thing: people devoting an huge amount of time and effort to "fix" something Apple doesn't want to be fixed.
And they're even proud of it! I find it to be utterly pathetic.
Over and over again Apple forces their manipulative decisions over their costumers and the majority just follows along.
And the funniest thing is the standard reaction on HN, a place for Apple fanboys. When Microsoft does the same this place erupts with anger, e.g: all the complaints about adds and telemetry on Windows. If Apple does it they invent excuses and over-complicated workarounds for it.